Lucky for me, while doing research for a book, I stumbled across badassoftheweek.com, a website with a collection of the world’s nastiest badasses.  And they’re not all men either.  Author Ben Thompson runs the site, and we asked him to stop by RU to enlighten us on badassery.

Here’s Ben…

Adrienne: What makes someone a badass?

Ben: It’s a wide assortment of folks I’ve chosen to include on the website and in the book, stretching basically from every age of history to every end of the moral spectrum.  On the one hand, you’ve got folks like Leonidas who went out there and busted heads to save their people, while on the other hand you’ve got cruel, brutal tyrants like Vlad the Impaler who went out and carved their kingdoms in the blood of their enemies.  The one thing that truly unites all of these people as badasses is an unshakeable determination.  Whatever it is that they wanted to achieve – be it freedom, conquest, criminal insanity, or whatever – they went all-out for it, didn’t let anything stand in their way, and didn’t stop until they’d smashed down everything that was blocking them from achieving their goal.

Adrienne: You have female badasses in your book.  How were these women treated by men? 

Ben: I hit on one or two female badasses from every time period I cover in the book.  In a lot of ways the women badasses from history are actually more impressive than the men, because not only were they performing these tremendous feats of face-smashing badassitude, but they were also overcoming all of these bullcrap social conventions their societies were trying to force on them.  When you’re looking at history – and particularly early history – many women were being bought and sold like property to whichever nobleman was willing to offer the best dowry, and they weren’t expected to do a whole lot other than look pretty and produce lots of male children.  For women like Anne Bonny and Joan of Arc, who broke out of that patriarchal cycle, overcame all of these stereotypes about women being the “fairer sex”, and then went out and cracked skulls together with the same ferocity of history’s most hardcore male warriors, it just makes them all the more badass.

Adrienne: How did you decide which badasses to use in your book?

Ben: It was a brutal, arduous process trying to narrow down who was going to go into the book.  I basically put together a list of about 100 people I wanted to use, and then began the exceedingly agonizing process of narrowing it down to just 40.  I’d liken it to a doctor coming in and telling you that you had to lose five of your fingers, and then you have to go in and figure out which ones you’re going to get amputated.  With so many great historical badasses out there, there’s enough content to write a hundred books like this!

Adrienne: Who is your favorite badass?

Ben: It was a difficult enough process narrowing it down to 40 – it would be impossible to get it down to just one!  In sticking with the theme of badass women, I’d say that someone like Tomoe Gozen pretty much sums up everything I’m trying to do with this project.  Basically, Tomoe was a woman who served as a badass face-slashing samurai asskicker during the Genpei War in Feudal Japan – we don’t know much about her life, and she doesn’t really bear any significant impact on the course of history, but she did behead at least two renowned samurai warriors on the battlefield and was respected and feared as a “warrior worth a thousand, fit to engage either man or devil.”  Those unsung, hardcore heroes from history are the ones I find the most compelling, and they’re the stories I want to try and tell.

Adrienne: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Ben: I generally like to note that it’s not a prerequisite of badassitude to get out there and kill ten thousand people with a toothpick and then conquer half the continent by riding over corpses with a heavily-modified steamroller tank (these are just the stories I tend to find the most interesting).  Being a badass is really just about getting out there, figuring out what you want, and simply going for it.  So that would be my advice to anyone who wants to be a modern badass – whatever you may want to accomplish, you’ve just got to let go of your fear, put yourself out there, and don’t let anything stop you from achieving your dream.  Also, please don’t kill someone with an axe and then try to sue me for putting a crazy idea in your head that you had to be homicidally violent to be awesome.

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RU Crew:  Do you have a favorite badass? 

Thank you to Ben for being here.  RU Crew, two lucky readers will receive Badass: The Book.  Just leave a comment to be entered into the drawing.

Join us on Friday when Kris Kennedy discusses medievals in the current marketplace.

Ben’s Bio:

Ben Thompson graduated from Florida State University in 2002 with degrees in History and Political Science.  He has run the website badassoftheweek.com since 2004, and has written humorous history-related columns for outlets such as Cracked, Fangoria, and Greathistory.com.  His first book, BADASS: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live was published worldwide by HarperCollins in October 2009.  For more information about Ben go to www. badassoftheweek.com or http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Relentless-Onslaught-Gunfighters-Commanders/dp/0061749443/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255705696&sr=1-1